The Silence of Shatters
by Cherie-24-Addict
Summary: Now that she can't drown out the racing thoughts in her head with satisfying her pleasures, Kalinda somehow has to make sense of her weakness, her desires, and the man who is selfless and infuriating all at once.  Post-3x08, with season 2 spoilers.


**A/N: Ok, I know I'm a really bad person for multiple reasons. **

**First, I haven't updated "Memory Serves" in three months, but after suffering from a bit of a breakdown and major stress, I kind of lost inspiration for the story. Still even though it's on hiatus, I _am_ doing my research so that I can clean it up and come into the fourth chapter with a better idea of where I want to take the characters, especially Cary.**

**Second, I heard this episode (3x08) wasn't going to be great and so I only really paid attention to the parts with Cary, Kalinda, and Dana. Mostly Cary/Kalinda, honestly. Just can't get enough, and even Cary's leaving the office at the end of the episode wasn't enough to stop my shipper squeal from permeating my house.**

**Anyway, here's a crappy little analytical piece that is barely edited and completely ubetaed at a quarter to one. Let me know how I did so late at night. Enjoy. Think. Make lightbulbs go off in your brain. Happy stuff.**

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><p>Standing in the middle of an Assistant State's Attorney's office during some late hour of the night, her surroundings are completely silent for the first time in years. No low murmuring voices, no howling winds, no flutters of papers brushing from one hand to another, no clinking of glasses, and no beeping of cars stuck in unbearable Chicago traffic.<p>

No gunshots, either.

She doesn't _do_ silence. Oh, she's all for a peaceful atmosphere – just her, a nice glass of wine, music, and a warm, willing body usually do the trick just fine – but a complete lack of sound is just too unnerving. Now that there's nothing to drown out the thoughts in her head, Kalinda will actually have to deal with the thoughts racing through her head through some sort of analysis or introspection, rather than bar-hopping, having anonymous sex, or poking Cary's buttons.

Oh, Cary Agos. Damn the bastard. She smirks to herself at the irony of the situation. He accused her of being the one always trying to get something from him. She hadn't been able to disguise her resentment at his accusations tonight – another display of weakness coming from the formerly impenetrable Kalinda Sharma. Neither of them can ever throw an insult without being the pot calling the kettle black. They are far too similar for that to ever work.

She'll have to get out of that nasty little habit of revealing her emotions to people who only want to hurt her. It's unfortunate that her slip-ups only ever seem to happen around him. She'll blame it on the shock of being shot at earlier that night. It's complete bullshit and he'll see right through it – after all, this is the woman who taught _Diane Lockhart_ how to buy and shoot the right handgun – but she doesn't care what he thinks of her. (No, really.)

Okay, so maybe she'd been a little bit frightened. She doesn't feel like dropping dead at the ripe old age of thirty two; no matter how careless and apathetic she may act about her life, she'll do whatever's necessary to cover her ass, if it means surviving a little longer. What she doesn't understand is why Cary immediately threw his body over her, bringing her down with him as they waited for the bullets to stop flying. Okay, he wanted to keep her safe… but there has to be a bigger motive than that. He has to be trying to pull something else out of her. It doesn't matter that he saved her life. It doesn't matter that for a split second (before she regained control of her thoughts), the stress of being shot didn't seem to matter as much with Cary's arms around her protectively. It shouldn't matter that maybe he was trying to save her life at the expense of his own, covering her in case, for some bizarre reason, the shooter tried to off the two of them while they were lying on the ground.

It's bizarre to think of Cary as…selfless. It just doesn't make any logical sense. The words "Cary Agos" and "selfless" were never meant to go together in the same sentence. It was meant for words like "Alicia", or "mother bear", or even "Leela" at one point. But there isn't any other way to describe it – Cary is protective and possessive of her to an excessive degree, considering they don't even qualify as colleagues, friends, or fuck buddies. The kid didn't even realize he'd cut his ear on the glass from the pavement, he was so hyped up about what had happened and getting answers.

It was why he kissed her tonight: not out of some weird, twisted version of his affection for her (or so she tells herself), but because he wants to know her reason for her coming to him, working with him, sticking with him more consistently than she has with anyone else.

She thinks the answer is pretty obvious, unfortunately. Does he _not_ realize that she tends to act a little sexier and smokier around him, and not just because she wants crime scene photographs or arrest details? Or that she's the one who has his back whenever he's about to get his ass handed to him by Lockhart Gardner? He scratches her back, she scratches his without leaving herself vulnerable to more scratching. Up until now, that's always been enough for everyone. She doesn't do feelings, or introspection, or repentance or any other vulnerability bullshit because _this craziness_ is what happens when she indulges in those emotions. There's just too many thoughts racing through her head all the time, coming at her like lightning, and she can't shut them up unless she's out doing something physical, something distracting, where she can focus on primal pleasure instead of primal fear.

"_I don't like you being in my head."_ His voice is low and clear in the otherwise empty office, taunting her with endless possibilities and double entendres, just like a very similar night only eight months ago, when he planted the idea of kissing each other and dealing with the sexual tension elephant in the room as being… normal. She never should have told him she liked normal; it's just one more thing he can use against her as he pushes her brain into an overanalyzing tailspin.

It wouldn't have even been so bad kissing Cary Agos, if his lips hadn't been so…inviting, if he hadn't questioned what they were doing once she returned the favor, if he had just accepted that she's not as calculating as he says she is. Maybe she just likes kissing him. That's a relatively normal thing to do, isn't it? Kiss someone you vaguely feel some awkward form of affection for?

Kalinda sits down on his desk and shifts uncomfortably, tapping the desk with her manicured fingernails to breathe some life into the room now that he's not there to force it in. Maybe if she makes enough noise, she'll drown out the little voice in her head reminding her that when he pressed his lips against hers, all her quick, nervous-energy thoughts suddenly seemed to vanish. Poof. Gone.

She shakes her head at herself. Overanalyzing has never done her good before. She slides her heeled feet to the ground and clickety-clacks out of his office, reluctantly looking back for a split second before she catches herself. From what she's heard around the State's Attorney's office, Dana might just be free for bar-hopping or dinner. Plenty of indulgence, experience, and hedonism, and certainly enough to suppress everything popping out of her brain at the moment.

Still, if this is what her _"welcome back to normal"_ is, she can't deny the fact that she's just a little afraid of what abnormal means for her and Cary moving forward. Tonight, she's definitely not in the mood to find out. Looking around one final time, she slams the door shut and glides down the hall, relishing in the droning sound of the heater as it drowns out her self-destructive thoughts and feelings, banishing it to a corner of her mind she'll never even miss.

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><p><strong>AN: The review button loves you. Give it a hug. If that's not enough to entice you, come to the dark side - we have a chocolate fountain!**


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